


Evolution

by cosmotron



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Angst, F/M, Family, Gen, Immortality sucks, but you get the idea, not that Hohenheim was really immortal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-17 00:05:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4645029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmotron/pseuds/cosmotron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He locks himself away, but the world does not stay locked in with him. He should have learned that long ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Evolution

**Author's Note:**

> Written for fma_fic_contest, prompt 321, "The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out." -J.R.R. Tolkien. Won first place!
> 
> The quote instantly made me think of Hohenheim, and I've missed writing his POV. Some of this, particularly one specific metaphor, was also inspired by Tuck Everlasting. Hope y'all enjoy. This hasn't been beta-ed due to its short length.

* * *

In his life, Hohenheim had seen a nation fall and a nation rise. He’d seen humans do despicable things, and he’d seen them try to make up for it. He had seen all manner of animals and plants, so many secrets and aspects of the world that it was dizzying to think about, even for someone like him.  
  
Time passes like a dream. He blinks, and months have passed. What feels like a week is actually a year. He sees a child, and before he knows it that child looks older than he does. He knows how quickly the world can change, but for a while he’s so caught up in the newness of everything he sees that he doesn’t even think to miss changing with it.  
  
People make it harder. Or easier. Or both. When he’s by himself he doesn’t notice the passing time, but if he is around others he can’t ignore it. It is…simpler…to believe that he can, that he can keep them all at a distance and keep on living. The truth, though, is that he’s the rocks on a shoreline with waves crashing over him. At first it feels as though he can withstand every one, but the more time passes the more he feels the tide pulling at him, eroding pieces of himself away.  
  
It isn’t until he meets Trisha that he truly starts to feel how quickly everything changes. He wants to experience every day, every hour, with her and their boys, and the knowledge that one day they won’t be there anymore sends him into a kind of panic that he hasn’t felt since Xerxes. He wants it to stop. To wait. For the world to give him just one more day, just one more moment, because every year they grow older is one more step away from him.  
  
So he locks himself away, because he has to  _make_  it stop. But the world doesn’t stay locked away with him, and he should have learned that long ago.  
  
All the things he’d seen in the world, and he missed what was most important. That’s the worst of all; it was there, happening, and he could have been there for it. He could have been there for every tantrum and every birthday, for every night and morning with Trisha, and by the time he realized it, it was too late.  
  
His sons, though, had learned much more quickly. They had embraced the world, and the people in it. He had no right to feel proud of them, horrible father that he’d been, but he did.  
  
They had learned what had taken him so many lifetimes to figure out, and maybe that, more than anything else, was enough.

* * *

 


End file.
